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Welcome back to the second half. I’ve had requests for one or two people to address certain issues, and I’d like to try and group the themes a bit. So the first theme that I’ve been asked to readdress is the question of the completion strategy, which has been addressed by, obviously, both the speakers, and I had a request from Ambassador Prosper to address that question.

Pierre-Richard PROSPER

original version

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think there’s some confusion regarding the completion strategy, or the issue, actually, takes on a life of its own. Madame Del Ponte reminded me of the sequence of events.

That it is true that we in the Security Council began to put a lot of pressure on the Tribunals to focus on closure. And I’ll be frank, the primary issue is we began to get internal pressure regarding the costs of the effort. We in the United States and other governments, everyone kept raising that question: « This is expensive. This is expensive. » So the idea came up and said, well, let’s find out what the mission is, and when will these tribunals begin to close. We had a lot of conversations along the way leading up to the efforts in the Security Council, and I played a large role in the drafting of the resolution. But the resolution was drafted in a way that the completion strategy was a goal. There weren’t fixed dates. It was a goal. The aim was to try to meet these particular benchmarks.

But another element of it is that it was drafted in a way where it gave shared responsibility for the completion strategy. So the burden wasn’t simply on the Tribunals. I haven’t read this in a while, but if you go back and look at it, you’ll see that there are three pillars : The Tribunal has its role and its responsibility ; there’s an element that the states, such as Rwanda or the former Yugoslavia, have their responsibility to cooperate ; and then the international community had its responsibility to support. It was always our view, and we had these conversations, that if one of these pillars fail, the completion strategy fails, because you needed all actors to do their part. So the indictees need to be apprehended and turned over. The international community needs to financially support.

Another element that we talked about is there needs to be domestic prosecutions. I know Madam Del Ponte, or Ambassador now, will remember, particularly with the former Yugoslavia, that one of the issues we always raised is that if the states do not do their part, the Tribunal will have to continue going and do its work.

I just wanted to put that out there, at least from a governmental perspective at the time, and that was the rationale behind it. Thank you.